CANADIAN ARTWORK DRAWINGS

The City of Gears "A Factory Horizon"

Canadian Artwork Under a black machine sky hordes of
faceless denizens march endlessly in oblivion. Like little cogs or
the cells of a single organism the peoples move in uniform routine
cycling themselves into the distance making the city spin. On the
horizon we can see the individual characters vanish as they come
together to form the skyline. Here the people become the buildings
and the buildings become the gears. Above these lost little people
the metamorphosis is reflected in the dark skies. Like some
extraterrestrial force the giant black cog wheel moves in unison with
the rotating crowds below, the entire scene acting as one monstrous
amalgamation, moving towards a solitary ideal.

“The Factory Horizon” is one of the
most intricate and detailed drawings in this City of Gears
collection. The original work was drawn with black India ink using a
hand carved bamboo quill pen. I made all the large works in this
series with the crude wooden tool. I really like the pen because it
precise enough to control but had an unpredictable nature to it which
I used to develop a spontaneous style in my strokes. This spontaneity
was particularly important to me because the works were so rigid and
repetitive but I wanted them to have an organic feel. I also took
pride in carving my own pens which in some inexplicable way added a
sort of magic to the drawings. This drawing was approximately 6 feet
x 8 feet and took about three days (25-30 hours) to complete.

This drawing was originally exhibited
at the O.C.A.D. atrium gallery in Jan 2002. The complete exhibition
included over 300 small pen artworks a series of animation loops, the
debut of my first graphic novel “The Last Optimist” and 13 large
scale ink drawing and murals. Following the first exhibition the
“Factory of Gears” was showcased at the Toronto Outdoor Art Show
in the summer of 2002 were it was purchased by a private collector. A
few years later the work was loaned to the Cambridge Galleries and
featured in a retrospective exhibition of my early larger works.